10,000 Birds

PICOP is a collection of sites near Bislig in Mindanao. In the late 50s to the early 60s, it was a logging concession awarded to the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (PICOP). In the late 80s, PICOP began to decline as a company, and the forest is now dominated by informal settlers and loggers unafraid of government enforcement, as the authorities are easily bri...

Which bird species do you think is the biggest attraction to visitors of your lodge (please only name one species)? The Cheer Pheasant is on the target list of many guests who visit the lodge. What is the name of your lodge, and since when has your lodge been operating? The Jungle Lore Birding Lodge, Pangot, Uttarakhand, India, was established in the year 1997 How…

One volume, 370 pages and 1,100 species: what their names stand for, both common and scientific? Let me try one particular species. Knowing that Eurasian Wren’s scientific name is Troglodytes troglodytes, and that troglodyte is a cave-man, I was always puzzled why that little bird has such a rude name, a downright insult of a name. Observing it exploring the hollows under the...

Spotted Wood Kingfisher Streaked Spiderhunter Oriental Pied Hornbill Black-throated Sunbird Art by J. W.

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My Big Year Rotterdam entitles me to having an opinion on other people’s Big Year efforts. Our guide Mercedes Alpizar has done a Big Year Costa Rica, so I thought (and nearly said) such an endeavour would be easy-peasy-lemonsqueezy when you live in a biodiversity hotspot. Fortunately, I kept my mouth shut (for once) and avoided some serious egg-on-face because birding in Cost...